Back to the alleged Lorquina

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Jose Olmo He is a great singer. Olmo, a native of the town of El Cuervo (Seville), won the award last November Golden Sun of the Festival Flamenco City of the Sun, from Lorca, in its XXXIII edition. Olmo already had the Silver Sun of a contest that despite its seniority had not taken off in the media or in public attendance, but that in recent years has been growing little by little and that has been counting on people from the culture and art to grow in parallel activities, such as conferences and exhibitions. This is the case of local artists as important as Lola Arcas y Pearl Strong. Attendance has also increased, although the event must continue to grow in terms of financial support and media presence.

As for José Olmo, he is a very serious singer, who considers himself orthodox and jondo, understanding as jondo certain palos, like the soleá or the seguiriya, touching with that attitude a certain Mairenism, but the truth is that the singer from Seville sings everything. One of his latest awards was at the Prado del Rey Serrana Festival (Cadiz), a cante which is done very little nowadays and which few artists carry in their repertoire today, being, as it is, a cante beautiful and of great technical difficulty. At another time it would be said with some disdain that Olmo is a professional in competitions. But, first of all, that he wins as many competitions as he has won throughout his career, must not be a coincidence. Secondly, in the flamenco, as in any music, if you don't make the leap to the media, and it's difficult to do so when you make a flamenco traditional and very jondo, you have to somehow stay in the performance market. In any case, José Olmo seems to me to be an excellent singer, already a veteran, very much to be taken into account.

This year I had the pleasure of giving the opening speech for the Lorca festival. Instead of focusing only on an exaltation of the type “in this incomparable setting” (although Lorca, of course, is) or on those high-sounding and hollow words about the flamenco, which actually mean nothing, rather than doing all that, I wanted to reflect on a matter that has long obsessed fans of flamenco in Lorca: the existence, or not, ever, of un cante own miner. The possible existence of something like the Lorca, in the same way that one speaks of a totanera, a San Antonio native or a Murcian, In addition to the classic and well-known tarantas, cartageneras or mineras, among others.

I, personally, have no news that the alleged ever existed. Lorca. I have, however, received some home recordings that contain cantes of the elders of the place who assured that what they were humming was the cante of Lorca, that is, the Lorca. However, those cantes were always, clearly, a taranto. This does not mean that there was not a local, different way of interpreting the taranto or even some form of taranta. It is normal, the cantes, as they were passed on orally from one people to another, as they moved from town to town, they changed, included different and personal nuances and ended up becoming another cante: the totanera, the murcian or, why not, the Lorca.

«I have received some home recordings that capture cantes of the elders of the place who assured that what they were humming was the cante from Lorca, that is, the Lorquina. However, those cantes were always a taranto. This does not mean that there was not a local way of interpreting the taranto or even some form of taranta»

Let's see. The route that goes from Puerto Lumbreras to Cartagena and La Unión, passing through Murcia capital, necessarily passes through Lorca, the third city of the Community and important for centuries: it was the Castilian border with the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada in the Middle Ages. Historically, travellers, muleteers and miners from Almería have passed through there on their way to the new promised land of Cartagena-La Unión. However, to put it briefly, there are never any flamenco and mining lyrics that mention Lorca. On the other hand, there are many that mention Totana, the town next to Lorca in the direction of Murcia. I will not mention these lyrics now because almost everyone knows them and for verbal ecology reasons.

But I suggest a reason for this: the popular genius who always chooses the easiest word to rhyme, even using onomatopoeia to match his genuine popular verses. And, of course, it is easier to rhyme, for example, the word "mañana" ("I leave very early") with Totana than with Lorca ("I am arriving at Totana"). And it is impossible not to think that in Lorca, muleteers or tartaneros, travelers and miners stopped on their way to other Murcian towns. And that there, in its taverns and inns, in its grocery stores, they did not sing, and therefore those Lorcans of that time, of the 19th century, recorded in their memory those songs. cantesy will end up becoming another cante. Why not the supposed Lorquina?

And in these eminently agricultural populations there would be pre-flamenco dances and primitive forms of tonas linked to field work. Already at the end of the 19th century in its Travel through Spain next to the painter Gustave Dore, the Baron Charles Davillier He left significant images of this area, in which he spoke of its gypsy life and the skills of the gypsies of Totana or Lorca, among which he highlighted dancing and fortune telling.

I believe for all this that Lorca has the right, if that longed-for is not found Lorquina, to 'invent it', with all the quotation marks you want. Taking into account, of course, all those circumstances that I have outlined here. All things are born or created at some point. With fewer antecedents, the festival-competition The Iron He created La Ferreña 25 years ago, a commission that was made to the master Phosphorite, And today it is already a cante more, with a musical base in Malagueña, which plays every year on the summer nights of the contest.